"Ancestral lands" is a crock, so to speak. I am an American Jew, and if I have any ancestral lands--and this goes for most, if not practically all of the Jews I know, including many in Israel--they'd be in Europe, perhaps. Obviously, history in Europe has been extraordinarily cruel to the Jews, but the idea that, since we (Jews) ostensibly lived in the Middle East at one point that the land is ours is more ludicrous than the idea that because Native Americans lived perhaps where I live now that they deserve my land and should be able to take it by force.

The point is that in this past century, since the end of the Second World War--and in particular, in the past two decades--the State of Israel has been progressively oppressing the Palestinian people, and that fact is what is destroying Israel's friendships around the world. I've been to Israel (on Birthright) and seen and spoken to Israelis. They're not bad people, but what their country is doing is morally reprehensible and will only isolate Israel further.

Will the cowardly Europeans actually put their money where their mouth is, and DO something for a change? The EU is Israel's top trading partner. Will they dare to downgrade the preferential agreements with Israel? To cancel the Association Agreement? Now that would be ballsy. I'll believe it when I see it.

The problem with you post is there is no difference between a authentic middle eastern Jew and an Arab. All Jews and Arabs are Semitic peoples and only have different religions. Netanyahu and at least half of the population of Israel are Europeans and are Jewish in Religion only giving them no more claim to the land then any Christian or Muslim. They are colonizers and many are anti-semitic as witnessed by reports that non-european Jews are not treated as well as European Jews in Israel.

People are quick to condemn Palestinian terrorism, and rightly so, and yet so many are so slow to condemn Israeli terrorism-- apparently it's only bad to kill people and take their stuff when Nazis or Muslims do it. When Israelis bulldoze other peoples' homes while they're still in them and shoot the survivors, it's perfectly acceptable, amirite?

The UN's Special Rapporteur (on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967) is Richard Falk. He is Jewish, and is an American national.

In his August 10, 2010 UN Special Rapporteur report Falk detailed the accusation that Israel was practicing a policy of apartheid in the Palestinian territories:

"Among the salient apartheid features of the Israeli occupation are the following: preferential citizenship, visitation and residence laws and practices that prevent Palestinians who reside in the West Bank or Gaza from reclaiming their property or from acquiring Israeli citizenship, as contrasted to a Jewish right of return that entitles Jews anywhere in the world with no prior tie to Israel to visit, reside and become Israeli citizens; differential laws in the West Bank and East Jerusalem favouring Jewish settlers who are subject to Israeli civilian law and constitutional protection, as opposed to Palestinian residents, who are governed by military administration; dual and discriminatory arrangements for movement in the West Bank and to and from Jerusalem; discriminatory policies on land ownership, tenure and use; extensive burdening of Palestinian movement, including checkpoints applying differential limitations on Palestinians and on Israeli settlers, and onerous permit and identification requirements imposed only on Palestinians; punitive house demolitions, expulsions and restrictions on entry and exit from all three parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Stop complaining all the time - the ultra right in Israel are very hostile to any peaceful settlement which recognizes the territorial rights of the people of Palestine. Dozens of liberal Jews like the J Street movement, Noam Chomsky, Alan Solomont, Jeremy Ben-Ami, George Soros, Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Atzmon and dozens of other intellectuals and thinkers have written about the apartheid regime that Israel has imposed on the people of Palestine and thy support the right of return of the Palestinian people to their villages and homes.

As an American, I'm getting sick of the Israelis doing things we tell them not to do. Then America gets a lot of the grief for letting the Israelis do it. Among my small circle, all of us no longer defend their decisions and their treatment of the Palestinians of the West Bank. Not to mention their trying to push into a war with Iran.

Danny Danon had the expletive nerve to say that the US wasn't a good ally of Israel. Let them find another patron, a lot of Americans are tired of their antics.

Lets face it, Israel is an arparthied state which needs to be brought back from the brink by stiff economic sanctions imposed by the rest of the sane World not subject to USA veto. The sooner this gets underway the better.

The reality of the division of Palestine is very different. The decision on where to locate the Jews was never decided prior to WW2. In fact, prior to the Evian Conference, the Jews had hoped that the West would take in all the Jews. Nobody did a thing about the issue, and then WW2 took its deadly course.

"In 1947, there were 630,000 Jews and 1,300,000 Palestinian Arabs. Thus, by the time of the United Nations partition of Palestine in 1947, the Jews were 31% of the population."

The decision to partition Palestine, promoted by the leading imperialist powers and Stalin’s Soviet Union, gave 54% of the fertile land to the Zionist movement. But before the state of Israel was established, the Irgun and Haganah seized three-quarters of the land and expelled virtually all the inhabitants.

In 1948, there were 475 Palestinian villages and towns. Of these, 385 were razed to the ground, reduced to rubble. Ninety remain, stripped of their land."

"In 1940, Joseph Weitz, the head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department, which was responsible for the actual organization of settlements in Palestine, wrote:

Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries - all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left.

There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument: ... the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish ... with a non-Jewish minority limited to fifteen percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary.

The Koenig Report stated this policy even more bluntly:

We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.

Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, declaimed: “We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.”

These are the words of Uri Lubrani, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s special adviser on Arab Affairs, in 1960: “We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters.”

Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Armed Forces stated:

We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel ... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.

Eitan elaborated before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee:

When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle."

"The territorial ambitions of Zionism were clearly spelled out by David Ben Gurion in a speech to a Zionist meeting on October 13, 1936: “We do not suggest that we announce now our final aim which is far reaching – even more so than the Revisionists who oppose Partition. I am unwilling to abandon the great vision, the final vision which is an organic, spiritual and ideological component of my ... Zionist aspirations.”

In the same year, Ben Gurion wrote in a letter to his son:

A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. I am certain that we can not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country and the region.

In 1937, he declaimed:

“The boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.” [47] In 1938, he was more explicit: “The boundaries of Zionist aspiration,” he told the World Council of Poale Zion in Tel Aviv, “include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, today’s Jordan, all of Cis-Jordan [West Bank] and the Sinai.”

Ben Gurion formulated Zionist strategy very clearly:

After we become a strong force as the result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine. The state will only be a stage in the realization of Zionism and its task is to prepare the ground for our expansion. The state will have to preserve order – not by preaching but with machine guns."

I get the impression that you (and the late Mr. Herzl) do not understand the term "self determination". Self determination is a right to be exercised by people who actually live on a territory - you cannot exercise the right to self determination sitting in Germany, Russia, or Latvia. Self determination is defined in any good dictionary as "the determination by the people of a territorial unit of their own future political status". Therefore, ipso facto, this right (i.e., self determination) can only be exercised by people who actually live in a certain place. For example, there are liberation/"self determination" movements in Tibet (where Tibetans actually live), in Kashmir (where Kashmiri people live), in Scotland (surprise, surprise - Scots actually live there), etc., etc. Zionism is an absurd attempt to grab land from people in Asia just because the Europeans were very nasty to the Jews. Total nonsense - in historical terms. People living in Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Germany, cannot suddenly decide to arrive in another place, grab land from people living there and call it "self determination". Never in recent history has oppression and imposition of apartheid been labeled as a movement or as a right (of self determination)!!!
Self determination is a right of a people who inhabit a territory - this right cannot be transplanted across 5,000 kilometers. For example, if the people of northern Thailand want to exercise the right of self determination, they cannot seek territory in France!!! Likewise, if the people of northern Spain want to exercise the right of self determination, they cannot decide that they want 50% of all the good land in Scotland!!! Kindly read a few concepts before you make ridiculous statements. Btw, I am sure that international law books are now available in Hebrew and Yiddish translations.

Your arguments are incorrect - Israel is a theocratic state which practices apartheid. Israel is the total opposite of a country that can abide by secular, human values and modern principles of justice:

1. It is a theocratic state. Israel is a totally theocratic state. The Zionist movement was based entirely on quotations from books written 3,000 years ago - supposedly by God!!! "According to the Book of Genesis, the land was promised by God to the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. A literal reading of the text suggests that the land promise is (or was at one time) one of the Biblical covenants between God and the Israelites." Have you ever heard such nonsense in your life?? Has any nation ever in modern history ever claimed title to land based on an ancient textbook, the author of which is a fictional character?? If you do not like theocratic countries, then Israel is the most theocratic country in the world, with apartheid formally written into their laws!!! Have you ever thought about this issue?? Their laws and day-to-day political discussions are based on ancient folklore and the OT which is very racist - non-Jews are practically (and legally, in some cases) considered inferior to the Jews (i.e., God's chosen people). Theocratic racism has led to apartheid being ingrained in their land laws.
2. It practices apartheid. "In a 2007 report, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine John Dugard stated that "elements of the Israeli occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law" and suggested that the "legal consequences of a prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid" be put to the International Court of Justice. In 2009 South Africa's statutory research agency the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) published a report stating that "the State of Israel exercises control in the [Occupied Palestinian Territories] with the purpose of maintaining a system of domination by Jews over Palestinians and that this system constitutes a breach of the prohibition of apartheid."[45] The report was written by a team of international law experts and scholars and does not represent an official position of the HSRC. In 2010 United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine Richard A. Falk reported that criminal apartheid features of the Israeli occupation had been entrenched in the three years since the report of his predecessor, John Dugard. In March 2011, Falk said, "The continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians is creating an intolerable situation ... [and] can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing."

The UN's Special Rapporteur (on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967) is Richard Falk. He is Jewish, and is an American national.

In his August 10, 2010 UN Special Rapporteur report Falk detailed the accusation that Israel was practicing a policy of apartheid in the Palestinian territories:

"Among the salient apartheid features of the Israeli occupation are the following: preferential citizenship, visitation and residence laws and practices that prevent Palestinians who reside in the West Bank or Gaza from reclaiming their property or from acquiring Israeli citizenship, as contrasted to a Jewish right of return that entitles Jews anywhere in the world with no prior tie to Israel to visit, reside and become Israeli citizens; differential laws in the West Bank and East Jerusalem favouring Jewish settlers who are subject to Israeli civilian law and constitutional protection, as opposed to Palestinian residents, who are governed by military administration; dual and discriminatory arrangements for movement in the West Bank and to and from Jerusalem; discriminatory policies on land ownership, tenure and use; extensive burdening of Palestinian movement, including checkpoints applying differential limitations on Palestinians and on Israeli settlers, and onerous permit and identification requirements imposed only on Palestinians; punitive house demolitions, expulsions and restrictions on entry and exit from all three parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

The ultra right in Israel are very hostile to any peaceful settlement which recognizes the territorial rights of the people of Palestine. Dozens of liberal Jews like the J Street movement, Noam Chomsky, Alan Solomont, Jeremy Ben-Ami, George Soros, Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Atzmon and dozens of other intellectuals and thinkers have written about the apartheid regime that Israel has imposed on the people of Palestine and they support the right of return of the Palestinian people to their villages and homes.

"Just to share with you piece of history, Seb, you probably heard of Haj Amin Al Husseini, the known Jerusalem Mufti, considered a Palestinian leader in the 1930's. You know, the one who made friends with Hitler.." - your comment.

It is very strange that history is distorted by the Zionist lobby just for point scoring purposes. The reality is that the Zionists were having an active dialogue with the Nazi party in Germany. Please read THE TRANSFER AGREEMENT: THE DRAMATIC STORY OF THE PACT BETWEEN THE THIRD REICH AND JEWISH PALESTINE. On August 7, 1933, leaders of the Zionist movement concluded a secret and controversial pact with the Third Reich which in its various forms transferred some 60,000 Jews and $100 million to Jewish Palestine.

The Zionists tried very hard to make a deal with the Germans to stab the Brits in the back in Asia. All the letters written by the Zionist leaders to Nazi Germany can be seen in the archives of the Nuremberg trials. These documents comprise 8 volumes of correspondence between the Zionists and the Third Reich. The poor British were bending over backwards to help the Zionists, who were busy stabbing the British in the back. Very typical!!! The USA will learn this lesson too - the hard way - i.e., after being stabbed in the back by Israel. The Israeli government is currently working hard to establish "military cooperation" with both Russia and China. And, in the meantime, the poor Americans are being convinced to bomb Iran. Duplicity is a Zionist art form!!!

Mr. Ben-Israel, TE readers have noted that you are very fond of quoting UN resolutions and Art. 80 of the UN Charter - expressing your deep love for international law. Therefore, we are bewildered why:

1. Israel does not respect several UN resolutions on the "occupied territories"??
2. Why Israel voted against the UN resolution on Palestine 2 weeks ago?? Btw, 96% of the world's population voted in favor of this resolution.
3. Why Israel does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice on issues like the legal borders of Israel, ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, etc.???
4. A few years ago, UNESCO (a cultural organization) voted to admit Palestine as a member. Why did Israel oppose this?? You guys are not in favor of cultural improvement??
5. Members of various UN human rights organizations are denied entry into Gaza and the occupied territories. Do you have anything to hide from the UN??

We are very impressed with your love for the UN charter. We hope that you will denounce the Israeli government's attempts to vote against UN resolutions and to respect international law. We would be most grateful.

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.

There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we did in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to American and the West in general.

Herzl and the earlier Zionists were just master manipulators - the guys you actually performed the ethnic cleansing came later. To that extent, he was "non-violent".

First he tried to convince the Turks. In 1896, Theodor Herzl set forth his plan for inducing the Ottoman Empire to grant Palestine to the Zionist movement:

"Supposing his Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine; we could, in return, undertake to regulate the finances of Turkey. We should there form an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism."

Then we started working on the Germans and the British. As the Kaiser undertook to forge an alliance with Turkey as part of his contest with Britain and France for control of the Middle East, the Zionist movement made similar overtures to Imperial Germany. The Kaiser took nearly ten years in his on-and-off dealings with the Zionist leadership to formulate a plan for a Jewish state under ottoman auspices which would have as its principal task the eradication of the Palestinian anti-colonial resistance and the securing of the interests of Imperial Germany in the region.

By 1914, however, the World Zionist Organization was already far advanced in its parallel bid to enlist the British Empire to undertake the break-up of the Ottoman Empire with Zionist assistance. Chaim Weizmann, who was to become president of the World Zionist Organization, made an important public announcement:

"We can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal."

Finally, the Zionists formed an alliance with the apartheid-loving racists South Africans. Herzl advocated achieving Zionist dispersal of the Palestinians by using the methods pioneered by Rhodes, and he urged the formation of a Jewish counterpart to a colonial chartered company, an amalgam of colonial and entrepreneurial exploitation:

"The Jewish Company is partly modelled on the lines of a great acquisition company. It might be called a Jewish Chartered Company, though it cannot exercise sovereign power, and has no other than purely colonial tasks."

"The poorest will go first to cultivate the soil. In accordance with a preconceived plan they will construct roads, bridges, railways and telegraph installations, regulate rivers and build their own habitations; their labor will create trade, trade will create markets, and markets will attract new settlers."

By 1934, a major group of South African investors and large capitalists had established Africa-Israel Investments to purchase land in Palestine. The company still exists after decades with South Africans as joint stockholders, the assets held by Israel’s Bank Leumi.

South Africa and Rhodesia became the role models for the Zionists. "The objective of Zionism has never been merely to colonize Palestine – as was the goal of classical colonial and imperial movements during the 19th and 20th centuries. The design of European colonialism in Africa and Asia was, essentially, to exploit indigenous peoples as cheap labor while extracting natural resources for exorbitant profit.

What distinguishes Zionism from other colonial movements is the relationship between the settlers and the people to be conquered. The avowed purpose of the Zionist movement was not merely to exploit the Palestinian people but to disperse and dispossess them. The intent was to replace the indigenous population with a new settler community, to eradicate the farmers, artisans and town-dwellers of Palestine and substitute an entirely new workforce composed of the settler population.

In denying the existence of the Palestinian people, Zionism sought to create the political climate for their removal, not only from their land but from history. When acknowledged at all, the Palestinians were re-invented as a semi-savage, nomadic remnant. Historical records were falsified – a procedure begun during the last quarter of the 19th century but continuing to this day.

The reality is that Palestine was a peaceful and very secular place. "There were over one thousand villages in Palestine at the turn of the 19th century. Jerusalem, Haifa, Gaza, Jaffa, Nablus, Acre, Jericho, Ramle, Hebron and Nazareth were flourishing towns. The hills were painstakingly terraced. Irrigation ditches crisscrossed the land. The citrus orchards, olive groves and grains of Palestine were known throughout the world. Trade, crafts, textiles, cottage industry and agricultural production abounded.

"Eighteenth and 19th century travellers’ accounts are replete with the data".

The Jews wanted to flee Europe. Fine. They wanted to settle in Asia. Fine. But, instead to behaving like guests, they are behaving like colonial conquerors. That is not acceptable at all. It is uncivilized.

Isaschar,
I want to thank you profoundly for proving how very correct I was in an earlier post when I wrote:
"What Israeli's, and their supporters in AIPAC and like organizations around the world, really care about is Eretz Y'Israel. That is what they want. They passionately desire that Israel become a nation occupying the ancient kingdom of David, including portions of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, and the totality of Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan, and that all goyem in these areas be removed. That is what they demand. They will never be satisfied with less. And be it by confiscating a few hectares of land to build a couple hundred settlement homes or by the use of the nuclear weapons they carefully hide, this is the only thing that will satisfy them."
Your endorsement of my assessment is appreciated.